BER pathways play a major role in the repair of mutations caused by reactive oxygen species that are generated during aerobic metabolism, as described in Nature 362, 709-715 (1993). Oxidative DNA damage has been implicated in the aetiology of degenerative diseases, ageing and cancer (Mutat. Res. 250, 3116 (1991), but evidence linking inherited deficiencies of BER to these diseases has been lacking.
8-Oxo-7,8-dihydrodeoxyguanine (8-oxoG), the most stable product of oxidative DNA damage, is highly mutagenic, since it readily mispairs with A residues (Nature 349, 431-434 (1991)), leading to an increased frequency of spontaneous G:C→T:A transversion mutations in repair-deficient bacteria and yeast cells. In E. coli, three enzymes, mutM, mutY and mutT, function synergistically to protect cells from the deleterious effects of guanine oxidation (J Bacteriol. 174, 6321-6325 (1992)). The mutM DNA glycosylase removes the oxidised base from 8-oxoG:C base pairs in duplex DNA; the mutY DNA glycosylase excises A misincorporated opposite unrepaired 8-oxoG during replication; and mutT is an 8-oxo-dGTPase preventing incorporation of 8-oxo-dGMP into nascent DNA. Human mutM, mutY and mutT homologues have been identified and termed hOGG1 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 94, 8016-8020 (1997)), hMYH (J. Bactiol. 178, 3885-3892 (1996)) and hMTH (J. Biol. Chem. 268, 23524-23530 (1993)), respectively. Patent specification no. WO 97/33903 also discloses a human MutY polypeptide and DNA encoding it, together with its potential use in diagnosing a cancer or a susceptibility to a cancer.
Until now, inherited, as distinguished from somatic, defects of BER have not been associated with any human genetic disorder, although mutations of the Escherichia coli BER genes mutM and mutY lead to increased G:C→T:A transversions (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 85, 2709-2713 (1988); J. Bacteriol. 174, 6321-6325 (1992); Mol. Gen. Genet. 239, 72-76 (1993); and Mol. Gen. Genet. 254, 171-178 (1997)).